In the Midnight Hour
by Merlin Missy
Summary: Seven heroes, seven stories.
1. Clark

In the Midnight Hour  
a Justice League story  
by Merlin Missy  
Copyright 2005  
PG

Disclaimer: DC and Warner Bros. own the Man of Steel. Is all I'm saying.

Summary: Clark and his notebook OTP. Written for the Free Verse Challenge. Spoilers up through "Divided We Fall."

A/N: Why yes "Secret Identity" _was_ cribbed from the first two paragraphs of this. Good of you to notice.

* * *

_Dreams, like canaries,  
are sent down into our mineshafts  
to discover how long we might survive

* * *

_

A short, sharp noise jars him from sleep._An alarm? An alert?_ No, a car horn outside his building, and he knows where he is if not who.

Another dream, Van-El again, and it merges with the gloom of his darkened apartment and he doesn't know who he is for another precious, terrifying fraction of a second. And then he is fully awake, and he still doesn't know. Sometimes he thinks he's an alien pretending to be a journalist, and some nights he wonders if he's a farmer caught in delusional dreams of being a hero.

The people, the other, I ordinary /I people, think him a saviour. Or a monster in waiting. Both, maybe. Luthor wanted the latter. He hadn't been trying to "make him mad," like he told poor Question before he'd pummeled him senseless. Luthor wanted to turn him, mold Clark into a dark mirror of the man he wakes up every morning trying to be. Hoping to be. And Luthor almost succeeded.

Clark turns on his bedside lamp, opens the drawer in the nightstand, and removes his notebook. It isn't a journal, isn't a diary or a dream book, isn't anything but a place to write. Lately he's been using it to scribble down the thoughts racing through his head, capture them before they escape, or worse, turn back on him and nibble away at his mind.

"Every man is his father's son."

He wrote it last night, and now he stares at the phrase, wondering. He's been dreaming of Van a lot recently. It's Bruce's fault, not unlike so many other things.

_"Mongul," Bruce said, and Clark tensed._

_"What about him?"_

_"He gave you your ideal life. You were married. You had a son."_

_Clark shrugged, ignoring the stab of pain that always accompanied those memories. "What about it?"_

_"You met Van-El, saw him. You remember every detail about him. He was real to you."_

_The lump formed deep in his throat. "Yeah."_

_"What would you do to have him back? To make him real? What would you give?"_

_"Anything," Clark said without pausing. And then Bruce told him what he and John had seen in the future, and then they both started watching John, just a little, just in case._

Clark puts pen to paper, closes his eyes, lets his hand move. Automatic writing, Ma would say, and frown. She files that with fortune telling: tea leaves, palm reading, and the rest. Clark would explain that it wasn't automatic, at least not in the sense she was thinking. It's his way of letting the words flow through him and get out. Sometimes it's gibberish. Sometimes it's poetry.

Another word for "journalist" is "writer."

Jor-El was a scientist, not a writer except maybe of technical papers. Countless times, Clark has wondered what his biological father would make of Clark's life, if he would approve. Countless times, Clark has come up with different answers. At the core of things, at the core of himself, he understands that he can never know. Jor-El was Kryptonian, and for every drop of blood that zips through his veins stating otherwise, Clark is human. He was raised by humans, he thinks like a human, he acts in almost every way like a human. His closest link to Krypton is Kara; sometimes he stands back and watches how she thinks and reacts, and she is I alien /I to him for all she's managed to assimilate.

Clark is alien to himself sometimes. An alien believing himself human.

He remembers devouring Pa's small collection of Asimov books when he was ten. He still knows by heart the story of the robot who did everything he could to be human, who dreamed of being human, and was only accepted as such when he chose to allow himself to die.

Clark died. More than once, the world has thought him dead, and still he is not considered human. Still he is the Other, and people fear him even as they thank him yet again. God, no wonder Captain Marvel vexed him so much, still bothers him at the edges of his soul. Clark sunk so low as to be jealous of a child. Tonight he's not certain he's climbed back out of that pit.

He turns the notebook to a fresh page, conscientiously writes the date at the top.

Kara disapproves of him sometimes. While the rest of the world believes him to be insufficiently human, she believes him to be insufficiently Kryptonian. She wants him on his knees before Rao in daily prayers and rolls her eyes --- not where Ma and Pa can see because she's not stupid --- when he tries to tell her he's a Methodist. She counters with questions: when was he last in church, could he even explain the difference between his religion and the rest of the carpenter-worshippers? Clark is also insufficiently Methodist, he thinks.

It's nights like these that he wishes alcohol had any real effect on him. He wishes he could go out with his friends and have a few beers and not think about the nature of life, religion and the whole universe (or just a child that never was) every time he tries to get some sleep. Even that would be too complicated: too many secret identities, too many well-known faces even without masks. Once, just once, Wally took John out with the intention of getting him drunk, right after the invasion, and hell, they all would have gone, but again the identities got in the way. Wally told him, later, that someone recognized John at the third bar they hit and that was why they cut the night short. Every time Clark thinks about asking some of the gang out to dinner, he thinks I Someone recognized John/I and he knows it could be him next.

He lives in fear of coming home to find a ransom note for Ma's safety. Or worse. Clark can imagine a lot worse.

He needs to get back to sleep, not lie here and keep writing nonsense, and he checks to ensure that it is nonsense streaming from his hand tonight. No great insights. No fantastic inventions, like surely Jor-El would have created in his spare time. The best Clark can do is copy the works of his forebears and hope not to blow himself up in the construction. Clark's not a scientist, not an engineer. He's not a farmer either, although the dreams of Van include running through large fields and laughing under a fat red sun.

Clark is …

When he was ten and looking for spare change to get ice cream, Clark went through his parents' bedroom. He knew he shouldn't, but the thought of one of Mr. Michaelson's extra large double dips with fudge and nuts had proven his undoing. So he rummaged and in his father's closet he found a shoebox with musty, yellowed paper inside. The ice cream forgotten, he sat on their floor, scanning through page after page cribbed in his father's neat handwriting. Space aliens, robots, heroes. Some stories had dates penciled at the tops of the pages; none were later than five or six years before Clark's arrival on Earth.

Now he knows how derivative most of the tales were; he can remember the prose well enough to know it was at best uninspired. But he can also remember the longing he felt radiating from every page, how there was a kind of innocence in the flow of the words. The author believed in the stories he told. Clark has never forgotten this.

He closes his notebook and stores it away again. He's calm enough to go back to sleep, and if he's lucky, he won't dream of anything but deadlines and a cranky editor. He clicks off his lamp, closes his eyes, tries to relax. He imagines Pa telling him the old standby of "Early to bed, early to rise," and there's a crinkle at the edge of Pa's eyes when he smiles. Clark smiles back, if only into his pillow, and thinks there are worse things to be than his father's son.

* * *


	2. Wally

In the Midnight Hour (2/7)  
a Justice League story  
by Merlin Missy  
Copyright 2005  
PG

A/N: Um. Yeah. This wasn't supposed to be a longer story. Sorry about that. If you care, it's almost entirely going to be an expansion of "Secret Identity."

* * *

Night, and he's so tired, he can't imagine being more tired because the Speed Force was in him or he was in it or both, and dude there are reasons he never sat still long enough to pass freshman philosophy and only some of them had to do with his now-terminal case of ADHD, and everything made sense inside the Speed Force and he knew who and what he was and it was totally unlike anything he'd ever done except maybe that time Joe had made him lick the paper during that one concert, but it wasn't really like that either. 

So tired, and hungry, he can't explain to the others what it's like to be him, to always have this craving for more calories, more fuel, it's like running on a quarter tank the whole time and the next gas station isn't for two hundred miles and he's torn between gunning it and trying to pace himself for the best mileage but all he really wants is about ten sacks of White Castle _right now_.

Out of bed and he runs to this place he knows across town that's open all night and they know him and he gets a discount because he's in the suit and they like having the Flash as a regular and hey, cheap burgers, so he eats two while he's there and chugs the rest on his way back home, hoping maybe this time it'll stop the rumbling in his belly enough to get some damned sleep tonight but he doesn't have much hope because once his stomach-hunger is gone he'll be left alone with the rest of his hungers.

His mind is racing, just like the rest of him, so fast he went today, so very fast and it's not like anything he's ever done before not even once, it was like ... like ... _(alien)_

Wally stops.

He stands still. It's a struggle, not to move, but he holds still, not even vibrating in place.

It was like not being human, and he gets it now.

And he runs, ignoring the pain in his stomach 'cause the burger joint isn't really that good, and he runs because he gets it, gets it all now, knows what he's always known ever since the accident made him run faster than anyone else had ever run before, what the Speed Force told him before he forgot almost everything when Shayera _(pretty, can't touch)_ grabbed his arm and pulled him back to Earth, and Wally understands that he isn't human anymore and hasn't been for years.

He taps his comm and waits impatiently to be beamed up to the wreckage of the Watchtower, and it coalesces around him like a sunrise, full of shorting wires and sparking soldering irons putting things back to normal or as normal as they're gonna get because Superman gathered the seven of them together after they saved _(killed)_ Wally and told them he was disbanding the League and they all agreed even him.

He helps for a while, pushing stuff out of the way and loading what's left of the Ultimen into disposal units and he tries not to think about the sacks of flesh in his arms because then he _will_ go crazy _(crazier)_, is going crazy anyway because he was alive inside the Speed Force and everything outside from now on will be a little less bright and clear and good.

Kara smiles at him and he smiles because she's cute but he doesn't smile too much because she's Superman's cousin and Wally has already died once today and she looks tired as she picks up another console for Steel to get a better look at the underside of, and man, Steel looks banged up poor bastard, so Wally helps rewire the thing at superspeed _(not as fast, never as fast again)_ so they can have a break.

And then Superman's voice comes over the comms and tells them to knock off for the moment and Wally knows why but he's not telling, not even Kara who's frowning, and suddenly he has even more free time and now Kara is squinting at him asking shouldn't he be resting 'cause Superman _(Clark she wants to say Clark)_ said he'd been through a lot today so Wally makes an excuse and says he needs to go to the gym and work off some excess energy and he's not exactly lying.

Run run run, feel the smooth pressure of the station floors beneath his feet, gravity isn't like back on Earth not quite, and so he can run that touch faster and it's all about the wind moving past his face, he saw this special once about sharks when there was nothing on but the National Geographic channel and there were no naked chicks but the sharks were cool and they need the water moving past their gills to breathe and yeah, the wind's just like that, blowing past him like a hot fast dream and he runs and runs to breathe.


	3. J'onn

In the Midnight Hour (3/7)  
a Justice League story  
by Merlin Missy  
Copyright 2005  
PG

Summary: J'onn's turn to reflect.

* * *

Tonight he is pretending to be the calm, quiet and comforting Alien Counselor. He wears a half-smile of understanding as Wildcat rattles off the latest in his list of woes at being a human in a circle of metas and aliens, saving J'onn's presence of course.

Of course, J'onn always replies.

He has stopped listening. He has seen into the man's mind and knows the inadequacies that plague him, and only some of them have to do with being surrounded by Others. He is afraid of growing old. J'onn has read this fear in too many minds, thoughts both given to him freely and idly drifting by him in reflection and open to any with the ability to read.

J'onn is older than all of them, even Diana, and he thinks they do not understand at all. Age is a blessing, especially age among loved ones for they all expect to die, with the exception of the Princess, and death is the greatest gift.

Wildcat fears death but J'onn knows in his deepest heart that the man will be glad to see an end to himself when the time unfolds. Ancient aliens and immortals simply remind him that the hour is not as far off as he might imagine. Humans are not so hard to understand, really.

J'onn ends the session, murmuring consoling words and waiting for the human to leave. He never asks after J'onn, how he is doing, what he wants or wonders or fears. That too is endemic to the human condition, a kind of insane selfishness that propels them through their days and nights, the belief that their own thoughts and fears are more important than anything else that has ever been. Sometimes he finds it endearing, he who once was in psychic commune with his entire species and so had to learn new concepts like "privacy" and "secret."

Tonight he does not feel the affection. Tonight he feels some of the selfishness he has learned from them — and oh! the other six would be surprised at the bad habits he has taken specifically from their examples — and he wants his own privacy and he wants his own commune with others and he wants. He wants.

He changes. In the reflection of the glass, currently facing out towards the stars, his form becomes the one he has worn most often during his long years. This is the face they fear, his graceful curves and points horrifying to those with too small a genetic diversity among their own species. This is the face his son and daughter would have worn without pride: a species whose existence is so thoroughly mental and spiritual has no need of pride, and a species who can shift and flow has no form to envy or despise.

He shifts, and he is Kryptonian. He is Thanagarian. He is Korugan. He is Bolovaxian.

He is human.

The form is tall like his own true shape, nondescript and blond against the starry backdrop. Should he walk among them like this, none would notice him, nor give him a second glance. He is too plain to attract the human women or the human men who might otherwise desire him. But he could be anyone.

He becomes the image of an actor whose movies have overtaken the DVD rack in their recreation room, whose fine features are swooned over almost daily by the more persuadable of his female associates during their down time. He casts a grin he does not feel at the blackness and the stranger's face smiles back.

He shudders into another form, this one of the current President of the United States, and he knows that, should he desire, he could slip past the man's guards, wipe his mind, assume his role, and none would be the wiser.

He is Martian again, his own form and not the false Martian face he created for Batman's comfort originally but spread like a soft wave among the others: a softer jowl here for Diana; a firmer muscle there for John. Subtle changes he has undergone, and none have noticed, even Clark who calls him brother.

A handful of aliens rattle about the Watchtower, including two who tried to take over the planet, and yet J'onn is the one the humans fear. He opens his mind to them as he passes the clusters and duos in the corridors, has learned not to recoil at the revulsion he reads.

He could change. He could alter his appearance and walk among them, telling them his name or not as he chooses. But he remembers the tests, remembers the shocks and the probes as scientists wearing human faces forced him to change and change and change.

He will not sully his shape with that form, not for their comfort.

He turns suddenly and leaves the darkened room. Down other corridors he feels the subtle emanations of thought from the few on duty at this time of the night, but he is alone until the Flash sprints by.

"Hey, J'onn!" he shouts, and he thinks _Whoa, great big naked Martian, but y'know, he's naked all the time anyway 'cause he makes his own clothes, and dude, I need not to think about him being naked all the time because that's just not right, hey look, it's Ice so slow down and say hi._

Part of him is angry with Flash, and part is exasperated, but he has known the youth for years now and cannot help but settle on amusement as J'onn makes his way towards his own lonely quarters.  



	4. Shayera

In the Midnight Hour (4/7)  
a Justice League story  
by Merlin Missy  
Copyright 2005  
PG

Summary: Shayera has been falling for years.

* * *

She is broken in ways that have no words, and she is more lonely than she has ever been. During her study of Earth, she read fairy tales as voraciously as textbooks, so when every step is like pins and needles, her sole gratitude is that she has not lost her wings as the mermaid lost her tail.

Humans are not the only species who are creative in their means of torturing one another. Thanagarians are quite inventive in their punishments.

There is a particular punishment, doled out for certain crimes. The guilty party's wings are bound and he or she is cast out from a tower far above the clouds. The higher the tower, the longer the fall and the longer the time spent thinking about one's sins. Legend says some find religion on the way down, but the hard ground believes only in itself.

Shayera thinks she knows how it must feel to step off the perch. She has been falling for years: from the moment she walked into the Cave, from the moment she hit John, maybe from the moment she kissed him. Every decision has pushed her off a cliff to land hard on a ledge below, and now there are no more ledges, just the walls of the world rushing by. Her stomach clenches and unclenches at the drop and sometimes she can eat and other times she stares at her food until she's nauseous and she throws it away untouched. On her worse days, she muses there's not much point to eating on the way down, unless it's to make a bigger splash.

Sometimes she wonders what the impact will look like. She wonders if she'll feel her bones snapping, or if it will come at her all at once like one, hard punch. She wonders if she will break to death or bleed to death or if the fall will rob her of consciousness on the way down. She's afraid the truth will be much worse and she'll keep falling forever.

They stare. Sometimes they stare. She used to wonder what they saw and now she just wonders when they'll find someone new to look at because she's done. She can smile and she can play and she can pretend that she's all right with the way the world moved on while she buried herself within Fate's tower. But her own homeworld didn't move on, and it's dead because of her, and the stares make her want to scream because while not one of them would hesitate to die for the Earth, none but her had to offer up the lives of their own people in exchange.

She falls a little more each day. Each morning it's a little harder to wake. Each battle is a little harder to fight. She can feel gravity weighing her down, calling her to the approaching ground and her wings can't buoy her up anymore because they are bound and they bind her too by their existence.

Some humans think the only difference between a Thanagarian and a human is the pair of wings, and some nights she thinks that without them, she could just be an alien in the shape of a human woman, and she knows they know her face and that she would still be outcast. She wonders how many of the others would cut off their legs to pass as something else, if they would poke out their own eyes to mimic a species they were not.

She has never asked J'onn even once why he does not take on a human shape.

She remembers the coffin Dr. Destiny built for her from her own fears, when she fell all the way from the old Watchtower. She remembers screaming until her voice was raw, trapped in the suffocating darkness. She remembers the mist pouring into the coffin with her, choking her before it coalesced into Destiny's skeletal form, remembers his rancid not-breath in her face as he grabbed her arms, remembers how he chuckled as she struggled. She remembers going cold, and then she remembers how he let go abruptly and vanished.

Sometimes she thinks there are no libraries large enough to hold all the stories and secrets she has never told. Maybe when she hits the ground, they will all burst from her at once and fly like _hradkef_ insects from a broken nest, but she's not going to tell before then.

She sits in meetings and she does not look at him. She eats in the mess and she does not look at him. She stands the midnight watches to avoid crowds and even though she knows he's changed his schedule to match hers she does not look at him.

And she's not going to watch John as he enters Ops now, even though he'll make a reason to stand next to her. She won't try to bump into him, won't let herself touch him. She pastes on a friendly smile — but not too friendly, not too inviting, not now — and waits for him to strike up a conversation as he certainly will. He hasn't asked her about Hro although surely Mari has told him everything. Out of courtesy, out of kindness, she doesn't know.

He is across the room and she is not looking at him. She is her own woman, her own person, and she has moved on with her life, if only down. Earthwards.

She tries not to think about the dead and there is nothing to catch her on her descent, nothing to stop her thoughts from spiraling. She makes an excuse to J'onn and runs for coffee and every step to and from the mess is painful but she's getting used to it and if she falls while she walks, she'll land on her knees. Hot and sweet, the coffee is something she can hold onto and gratefully she drinks it into her like an addiction or a lover. The same thrill runs through her veins.

No time at all has passed until she is back in Ops, and she should not be surprised to find that Mari has made an excuse of her own to join them up here. She likes Mari, and there are more terrible things she has done than befriend her ex-lover's new flame.

The other woman sends her a smile, both welcoming and possessive, as her arm slides through John's. Shayera is bright enough to smile back, to go to the other side of the room and set down her cup, pretend to guard the Earth far below them.

And as she does not watch them, does not watch him being happy with someone else, she falls a little more.  



	5. John

In the Midnight Hour (5/7)  
a Justice League story  
by Merlin Missy  
Copyright 2005  
PG

Summary: John's been thinking.

* * *

Night, and the air is cool. It's a routine security job for less than routine people: Diana's friend Audrey is in DC for a summit — a lot of world leaders are, but Diana always gets that Look when it involves Kasnia's queen — so they're lending a hand.

He tries not to think about the last time they did security for a summit.

John's got a good position, clear sight to the building, people he trusts in the right places surrounding him. He pulls up a shadow and waits.

And waits.

His mind starts to wander. John's pretty good at dividing his attention, better than most people think just looking at him. Long before Basic had him standing out in the rain and mud for hours, grade school had taught him all about daydreaming while also staying alert. During arithmetic and spelling, he could pretend he was on patrol helping out the Justice Guild and still answer questions when his teacher called on him. During high school, he did the same thing, although he spent a lot less time thinking about the JGA and a lot more fantasizing about impressing Becky Johnson by a last-second touchdown during the Big Game. And he still got the answers right in algebra most of the time.

Tonight he watches, but he can also let his imagination go where it's wandered these last few weeks.

Another shadow detaches from the wall.

"Stop it."

"What?"

"Thinking about him. Rex."

"Really not your business." Some day John's going to insist Batman get a psychic evaluation.

"It's my business if you get me killed because you're banking on not dying." This wasn't a conversation he wanted to have, not now, certainly not with Bats. But if not him, then ... John sighed.

"I can't help it. I met him." He focuses on the building, on the dignitaries exiting their vehicles. He knows which people they've got doing undercover valet work tonight, and he's hoping Wally doesn't get stupid with the Prime Minister's car.

"And now you're thinking about the future."

"Yeah."

"Imagining your wedding. Wondering how she'll tell you."

"Yeah." Some people head out of the summit: powerful men with useless women draped on their arms, powerful women with expensive escorts. There are nights, not many but some, when he wonders if Mari just likes the look of him on her arm, if he's as much a part of her image as the clothes she models. And other nights he wonders if he isn't the stupidest man alive for not already having asked her to marry him.

He knows why he hasn't asked, why he won't. He's seen his son's face and he knows he'll marry Rex's mother because that's what a man does. He's pictured her in white, and in soft blue, and in deep green, and he's imagined her smiling as she places his hand on her belly, imagined her whispering in his ear.

"Picturing the six months of bedrest she'll be on. The fight where we lose J'onn because she's not there. How she'll start hemorrhaging during the birth and die because the nearest possible blood donor is fifteen light years away."

"What? No! That's not ... You don't know that's what's going to happen."

"You can't act as though you know it won't."

"I'm not. I won't."

"You are and you do. I've been watching you. You're going into battles with the assumption the two of you are going to walk out of them. I can't afford for you to get sloppy."

He lets out a breath. "Fine. Whatever. Lecture done?"

"You're one of the few I don't have to lecture." John's mouth twitches as Batman continues: "Consider it friendly advice."

He expects Batman to vanish again, the way he does on nights like these, but instead he waits in the shadows beside John, his breath barely a hint in the chilly night air as the time passes. They watch as more people leave the summit for the parties the League already has scrutinized and quietly staffed.

"What did you tell Diana?" John asks, as Queen Audrey steps into her own limousine.

"About?"

"The future."

"I haven't."

"I thought you would. She went with us."

"It never happened. There was nothing for her to know."

"Old You didn't have a wedding ring." It's not the nicest thing he could say.

"Old Me didn't have a Cave anymore, either. It was a pocket timeline. You need to keep that in mind while you're picking out patterns for baby booties." If John didn't know him better, he'd swear Batman is trying to still a laugh.

He pushes his luck. "Yeah, I was thinking a nice emerald pattern with duckies." He slides his eyes to watch the silent figure beside him. No reaction. _Damn._

After a very long pause, Batman says without looking at him, "You could see about getting some hand-me downs from Arthur's son, assuming you don't mind lambs on everything."

John loses whatever battle they are having, breaking his focus on the last few dawdling ambassadors to stare at Batman. "You're kidding, right?"

"Do I ever kid?"

It's not an answer, but he's used to not getting real answers from the Bat. _Back to work,_ he admonishes himself as Batman disappears for real this time. The future will have to wait.


	6. Diana

In the Midnight Hour (6/7)  
a Justice League story  
by Merlin Missy  
Copyright 2005  
PG 

Summary: Diana has a religious experience.

* * *

The world is shifting out of kilter. 

The magic users, the psychics and the sensitives, these have felt the first stirrings that something is going subtly wrong. J'onn has shared his fears; others have not been so forthcoming. It is not until Etrigan comes before them, shaken and bent and announcing that the future is rushing towards an end, that there are words put around what many of them have been perceiving for months.

The inner eyes have not gone blind, they are looking into a sudden abyss. The Earth is about to die.

Everyone deals with it in different ways. Most of the League members have spent their lives actively saving the world. They look for ways to battle the encroaching darkness with fists and weapons. The more accepting among them search for ways to minimize the damage. The Nelsons have recused themselves from all other duties, and spend their time and magics constructing pocket dimensions in which to hold as many souls as they can. Steel and the Atom have lent their talents to the space program, stepping up the efforts for the new Mars colony on a timetable more firm than any calendar.

Diana prays.

Prostrate before her altar, she has spent hours in supplication, going over the soothing words of litanies her mother taught her as a girl. There has been no answer, and she cannot access the dimensions that might otherwise allow her transport to Olympus.

Her knees ache and her arms are chilled, but she feels destiny rushing around her like wind, and she does not understand why the gods will not respond to her pleas.

"Hera, I call on thee. Father Zeus, I beseech thee. Hermes, I beg you come and send my prayers to Olympus."

Night after night, plea after plea, only silence has greeted her. Until now.

"Father Zeus, I beseech thee."

Inside her soul, she hears the voice, like static from a distant star: "Why do you call him 'Father,' my child?"

She debates not answering. The one god she has chosen not to ask chuckles warmly in her soul. "Silence does not become you, my child."

She makes a fist. "Stop calling me that."

"If you insist."

She is alone and she needs answers. Careful not to give too much away, aware that her thoughts must be open to him regardless, she demands, "Tell me what is coming."

"Nothing at all. That's the point. It's the end of the world."

"We've faced that dozens of times. Tell me how to stop it."

"You can't. No one can, not now. Demeter herself cannot ... " He broke off.

"Cannot what?" Diana assumes he does not want to dwell on his mother-in-law, but she has no time for his discomfort.

"What do you know of the sacred king?"

She lets out a breath. "The sacred king is he who rules for a certain time and then dies for the sake of the land. It's an old myth, solar-based, revisited in many cultures."

"_I'm_ an old myth, my ... dear. The sacred king is born and dies every year and his bloods allows the crops to grow." She can't see him, but in her mind he is waving his arm casually. Hades has no use for growing things. "The World itself must also have its sacred king. Every thousand years or so, Demeter must give birth to the World."

The sheer impossibility of this would surely vex her friends; Diana is used to it. "But Ares ... "

"Yes." The war was fierce, and bloody. Hippolyta is dead, and she did not die alone. The gods still lick their wounds, save Ares who died for his folly, and Demeter who is barely a shadow of her former self. Much of the League's primary work this past year has been to redistribute supplies for those hit by sudden and, to most, inexplicable famine. Demeter is too weak to walk the Earth and make the food grow.

"Will she recover in time to give birth?"

"She will not even recover in time to conceive."

She tries to think, looks for another answer. "Can Persephone take her place?"

There is a warmth through the link, unfamiliar from this particular source, and a touch embarrassing. Passion whispers in his tones as he mentions his wife: "Your stepmother has already offered to take her mother's place, but she cannot bear a child any more than Demeter can. Nothing grows in Tartarus."

"She could walk the World."

"For six months. She would carry for nine, and she is bound to return here. The babe would die and the World would die with him."

"Then another. Athena, Artemis, _someone_."

"Cannot and will not. Demeter is bound to the earth, the others far less so. Another goddess would not love the World enough to birth it, and no mortal woman would survive." He pauses. "We've gone down that route before."

"Could I?" As soon as the words are spoken, she knows she has been trapped, that Hades has been ordered, or has chosen for reasons of his own, to seek her out and make the offer.

"You could," he says, and his tone is predatory.

She pulls back, sits up; although Hades is not is the room with her, she wants to back away from him. "I was simply asking if it were possible."

"And now you know, and you have a choice to make. But don't take too long to decide. You might say the future is depending on you."

He is gone from her thoughts as quickly as he appeared, and Diana is alone in her darkened room.

"Bruce?"

Alfred has let her through the clock; he is kind, has offered her refreshment and quiet conversation, but she has no time. She wonders if he is hoping she has come to extract Bruce from his Cave as she might an oyster from its shell. Maybe she has.

Bruce doesn't respond, and she makes her way down the stairway into the darkness. He is sitting at his computer, hunched like an old man. "I need to talk to you."

"We've said what we need to say," he responds.

"This is different."

"It's always different, Princess. The answer is going to be the same."

She considers arguing with him, knowing it would do no good. He is even more committed to saving the world than she. He would be the last one to talk her out of a course of action that could save them all. Part of her has hoped anyway.

"We miss you," she says instead, and she leaves him there inside his own pain. As she passes through the Manor, she sees Tim watching her from a doorway. He is still too pale, and he does not speak to her as she walks past. She wants to go to him and wrap her arms around him but she is neither mother nor stepmother to him and she cannot fix what has been broken inside him.

She should have known better than to come here. Bruce already knows what responsibilities a child brings.

* * *

Almost midnight, and Diana has bathed in rose water and oiled her hair to fall in ringlets around her face. She has donned her ceremonial garb; Athena's armor has no place here tonight. The face in her mirror is her mother's tempered with her father's coloring, but the tightness in her chest is her own. She hasn't been able to eat all day, and since leaving Wayne Manor, she has spoken to no one. Her friends would not understand, and her mother has passed beyond where even Diana can reach her. 

Diana lights the candles on her altar and begins to pray. Thanksgiving she offers, and a request for grace. Prayers to Demeter, to Hera, to all.

"Good girl," speaks Hades in her soul, and she shudders.

"Begone, brother," says a new voice, and Zeus stands before her, clothed in white.

Already prostrate, Diana hides her face. "I serve the gods, Father Zeus."

"Rise, Diana," Zeus speaks, and helps her to her feet. She has been in his presence once before, when she was newly brought forth to life, and although she is full-grown he does not look smaller.

"Tell me your will and it shall be done," she says.

Zeus smiles at her paternally. "Your mother raised you well, child. But this must not be my will. It must be your own." He rolls his eyes upward. "Happy?"

She hears yet another voice, recognizes it as Athena's: "Much better, thank you."

He glances at Diana, and while his magnificence remains, his bearing becomes more casual. "All I did was suggest that I simply visit a pretty maiden in her bedchamber and have done with the thing like we used to in the old days. But _some people_," he says, "have been reading books and have gotten ideas."

"Books?" Diana asks, wondering just how innocent she can sound to one who is basically omnipotent.

"_Discovering The Inner Amazon_," Athena says, and Artemis chimes in, "It's been enlightening."

Zeus raises an eyebrow, and Diana decides it is long past time to be afraid. "I'd like to point out that I was quoted out of context at least twice."

"That would imply," says Zeus, "that the rest was exactly what you intended to say." Diana doesn't respond, but she meets his eyes, and then the god spreads his mighty hands. "Everything changes and everything stays the same," he says. "Now, the goddesses are speaking of equal rights and my wife wants to go 'find herself' or some such. But I remain the ruler of the gods, and the sacred king must still be my get. The goddesses will fuss for a century or so, and then things will go back to how they have been for millennia. This is the way."

Diana is her mother's daughter, and for a moment, has a very blasphemous impulse.

Zeus reads through her easily, and laughs, but gently. "But my problems are not your problems. You have decided, then."

"I serve the will of the gods."

"Diana."

"I ... Yes."

"Good. Come here."

Her stomach twists but she does not hesitate. She tells herself this is how it must be, this is what must be done, she is no longer a naive virgin who has never known a man's touch, she has had lovers for over a thousand years, she ...

Zeus touches her hair, and the world shimmers, and they stand surrounded by beauty. They have come to Olympus. She stares around her, recognizing faces and forms. She turns her gaze back to Zeus. Surely he does not expect to ravish her under the watch of all the gods?

"Diana of Themyscira," breathes a voice, and Demeter glides forward. She is practically a ghost; through her robes, Diana sees Apollo and Artemis sitting together.

Diana bows her head. "I serve the will of ... "

Demeter raises her hand. "Yes, yes. Do you take this task upon yourself of your own free will?"

"I do."

Demeter smiles, and seems more substantial as she comes closer. She is just shorter than Diana, so as Diana's head is bowed suddenly her gaze is full of the goddess's tilted face, and her body knows this before her mind can adjust. Demeter's lips are full and firm as any other's, and she tastes of clover and earth. Diana expects the kiss to break, but Demeter continues to press her soft mouth against Diana's. While they only touch at their lips, Diana feels the familiar warmth in her belly and between her legs.

She feels Zeus approach her from behind and he places his warm palms against her bare shoulders and Diana ...

When she can breathe again, when she can _think_ again, Demeter is still standing before her, that same smile curving her mouth, still as insubstantial as smoke. Zeus drops his hands and kisses Diana lightly atop her head. A last quiver of pleasure moves through her. It is nothing like she imagined, and she will never be capable of explaining to anyone else exactly what has happened.

"Stay safe," Demeter commands her, and Diana nods, unable to speak.

Zeus adds, "Protect my son." Diana sees Hera in the gathering around them, and the queen of the gods rolls her eyes at his words.

The world shimmers around her again, and she is alone in her room. The clock tells her it is three seconds past midnight. Around her this half of the world slumbers and already she feels the other half stirring to life on the first day of Spring in the North.

This just might work.

* * *

The swell and swoop of Diana's changing body cuts a proud figure yet, even as she grumblingly accedes to take monitor duties in lieu of battles. Another three months, they promise. 

Five, Shayera chides. She has played a jealous compatriot, whose own confinement nearly killed her and her son.

Diana has known from the beginning she too carries a male. None have asked her directly his father's name. Batman has not been seen nor heard from by the rest of the League in over a year. They assume. She allows them their gossip, knows they cannot comprehend.

She is immortal, but her son shall be divine.

There are difficulties. Not with the pregnancy; among the gifts she has been granted are the gentling of her symptoms. She eats heartily and keeps it down; her belly stretches without tears; she does not feel overtired after exerting herself. Where Shayera required constant medical supervision, and even Inza stayed on bed rest her last month, Diana has politely refused all but the most superficial exams and hasn't needed more.

However, there are those in Man's World who disparage her for her new status of unwed expectant mother, and while it is not nearly the worst trouble the League has had with the press, it has not helped. O'Bannon has twice made her the topic of his nightly program, inviting guests who are dismayed at the values she is teaching the young. She has noticed he only calls her a role-model when she is doing something of which he disapproves. Glorious Godfrey minces fewer words, and has a weekly spot where callers into his program place odds on the identity of her child's father. She is a touch dismayed that Clark is the frontrunner almost every week.

Bruce has not called, has not written. The only sign she has had of his continued concern is when socialite Bruce Wayne accidentally is overheard at a party talking about O'Bannon's previously-unknown mistress. Diana is amused to note that Lois quickly writes a rare (for her) Society piece all about it.

Little wars, little vendettas, these are how they all survive one another.

On the twenty-first of September, Diana feels a great pain, and she knows that the last sacred king has been sacrificed. She has never met him, does not even know his name, but she knows it was Artemis who shot the arrow, and her father who collected the soul. The child within her trembles all day, and she whispers meaningless promises to him, knowing that someday it will come his turn as well.

* * *

December is cold and dark. Despite Diana's quiet assurances that the world will recover, there have been food riots, and while they have kept the peace, barely, people have died and more are hungry, and none but she believes this winter will end without more pain. 

Her own pain begins in her lower back, first thing in the morning. She wakes from a vision dream to full knowledge that this is the day. There is always someone around her now, sleeping in her spare room or an ear-touch away at transport. Arthur is today's keeper, but she slips past him while he slumbers heavily and uneasily in the above-ground bed.

Demeter has told her there are rites which must be performed. She has decreed there must be a priestess in attendance, to act as both midwife and avatar for Demeter herself. Diana follows the path the goddess has given her, mindful of the cold and the unfamiliar city streets. She raps her knuckles against the doorframe. At first there is no answer, and she takes a better look: the house is small, not well-kept, but there is a greenhouse in the back which looks new.

The door cracks open.

She recognized Poison Ivy at the same moment the other woman recognizes her.

The greenhouse is warm and breathy like Themyscira. Diana is comfortable in the loose shift she has brought, as comfortable as she is going to be. She has been spared trouble during her pregnancy but she is not spared pain as the hours pass and her body readies itself.

Once, twice, she sees Harley Quinn bring in a tow-headed and sleepy toddler to ask Ivy questions. In some ways, Harley herself is a child, and Diana's heart would go out to her and her fatherless son, but she remembers Tim's eyes.

The child is put to bed as night falls. Ivy flicks on the night lamps for her plants and Harley sits with her, talking in a loud whisper: "What're we gonna do to her, Pammy?"

"I told you," Ivy says far more quietly. "We're not going to do anything to her. There's too much going on. Just trust me, okay?"

The greenhouse is starting to get crowded. Hera has come, for she attends at all births, and Demeter, and Hestia and Athena and others as well; Zeus, as always, has decided this must be women's business and he will not participate. Diana is amused, between her contractions, that Harley cannot see them at all, while Ivy glances around herself nervously, like one who is surrounded by wills-o-the-wisp.

It is almost midnight. There are no clocks, but Diana knows it in her soul. She is tired and sweaty, and when Ivy tells her she is fully dilated, she is relieved.

Deity possession is an odd experience, she will think later. Demeter glides inside her body, taking over her form as though wearing Diana like a robe. Diana is just conscious enough to see Hera slip inside Ivy. The pain becomes distant. Someone who is not Diana screams and pushes out the new sacred king and gives birth to the World just at the strike of midnight.

Tired, so tired, but she is back in control of her body and Demeter is standing beside her, suddenly solid as oak. Ivy holds a bloody but breathing baby in her arms, mechanically wipes away the mess and wraps him in a blanket.

The goddesses hover around. Harley looks around her bewildered. "Red, when did we get company?"

"Go see to Jason," Ivy tells her, and the blonde scampers off, afraid of what she cannot possibly understand.

_Jason._ Diana rolls the name around in her mind, thinking of Bruce's broken child. Another sacrifice. "Why are they all boys?" she asks, not really expecting an answer.

"They're not," Ivy replies. She flips the blanket aside for Diana to see.

Hera and Demeter share a secretive look, and Diana thinks she understands as Hera says merely, "Things are changing."

Ivy hands Diana the tiny goddess. She is golden and perfect and Diana stares at this child of Demeter and Zeus that she has contained inside herself these long months. She knows that the child is not hers, has never been hers, but she thinks she sees Hippolyta's features in the girl's face, and she is pleased.

Hestia and Hekate fuss over the baby as Diana's body expels the last of the birth. Hera places her hand on Diana's abdomen and Demeter places one on her cheek. The final contractions stop, as does the rush of blood. By daybreak she will be almost completely recovered, and by noon, few in the World will recall that she has ever been pregnant, or will remember it vaguely as something they heard in passing once.

"You may visit her as often as you wish," Demeter says. Diana carefully gives her the child --- Cassandra, like the seer --- just as Harley re-enters the greenhouse with a tray of mismatched cups full of red Kool-Aid for their guests.

* * *

The following night she is alone, again. Zatanna came to visit briefly, but shook her head the entire time, and squinted as though trying to see something that wasn't quite there. Diana knows without checking that her hostesses from the night before have gathered what they cannot live without and fled the little house. 

Diana pulls down the blankets on her bed. Part of her grieves the loss, and part of her takes joy, but all of her is weary. On her nightstand is something new: a snow globe, like the one Wally gave her for Christmas one year. Inside, she sees snow swirling; upon closer look, it is the fall of cherry blossoms in an eternal orchard, and beneath one tree, she sees a golden little girl waving her chubby fists and giggling at the tumbling flowers.


	7. Bruce

In the Midnight Hour (7/7)  
a Justice League story  
by Merlin Missy  
Copyright 2005  
PG

Summary: The clock always strikes midnight inside Bruce.

* * *

Above all else, he despises vulnerability in himself. So when Mongul's plant, and later Clark and Diana, coax from him the heart's desire that could have killed them all, he feels a great shame. He should have been stronger. 

When Mordred sweeps across the world with his kingdom, and Bruce cannot fly, cannot fight, cannot keep up, he takes the only position he can. He leads the other three — four, counting Etrigan — into battle. And still he is ashamed.

The truth is something not even his closest associates know: for all intents and purposes, he has always been that eight year old wearing that tiny cowl.

The others in the League think they understand; his family from the Cave think they understand more. They dance around one another in their rare meetings, and Bruce wishes those encounters were more rare. Clark bullies his way through social situations the way he always does, with forced jolliness and what he has learned can be construed as an open smile, and so Bruce's family has been brought in to help plan for the construction of the new embassies on Earth.

Bruce is displeased.

Barbara and Tim have been wheedling him for a chance to work with the League, and if he is indeed spending more time in Gotham as he claims is his intent, that frees them to do so. Bruce can't deny that his family is more relaxed with the new associations: Barbara laughs more when she sees Kara almost every day, and Tim has managed to delight almost everyone he's met. Even Dick, distant these past few years, has forged an easy friendship with Wally, and for the first time in an age of the world, Bruce finds himself talking with Dick about things unrelated to the Mission

His hearing isn't like Clark's, but he has never let that stop him from knowing everything that is said around him. When Fire and Ice are chatting with Booster Gold, and all of them are amazed ("I never thought the Batkids would be so well-adjusted." "Yeah, they're so _normal_, you know, once you get past the weirdness.") he keeps his grim smile to himself and walks on.

The rest — save Clark and Diana, who've both made time to get to know Tim, because they half understand — expect anyone associated with Bruce, _raised_ by Bruce, to be as distant (_damaged_) as he.

There's an intensity, certainly. No one else looks at a problem with Tim's focus. For all his glad smiles behind his mask, Dick has not revealed his name to anyone. Barbara is friendly, but reserves herself for times when she is alone with the boys and also with Kara. That she shoots daggers at Diana whenever possible is unsurprising and cannot be helped. Alfred has not been involved, save as a listening ear, for he has no mask and can too easily be identified; this has not stopped John from asking after him, nor Shayera from passing along a bottle of what, to someone with a different physiology, is probably a very good liquor.

Blending families isn't easy at the best of times. These are children and friends and lovers who do not all exist on the same plane, much less the same page. It is why Bruce has resisted this so long, and why he knows how useless his resistance has been.

They love him.

Wally and John would both protest the word, Clark would blush, Shayera would roll her eyes, J'onn would merely smile, and Diana ... Well, he has much to discuss with Diana. His family, his _first_ family, they understand the truth without speaking. They're adept at not speaking that particular truth, which perhaps is why they need this new family as much as he does.

Bruce hates vegetable imagery, butthere is a truth to the notion of too much darkness choking the hardiest vines. He has clung to these new friends, this new family, even as he has pushed them to the limits of where he can bear to touch each. They have brought brightnesses into what was dark inside him, just as each member of his original family did so. Alone, forever, but there was Alfred's warm smile to ground him. Unmitigated darkness, and then Dick's laughter filled the Manor. Barbara, Tim, like a web, not trapping him but drawing him into the world and keeping him from falling entirely into his own circular thoughts.

And then Clark came into his life, the sun to Bruce's shadow, and he found a brother where he hadn't even wanted a friend. The rest surround them, and come between them, grey buffers between their black and white. He finds each grey has its own delightful depth and although he clearly remembers the time when the darkness was the only color he saw, he does not want to lose a single shade. If that means blending the lights and music of one family together with the garish colors of another, and this keeps him from the insanity he knows is never as far as he hopes, then so be it.

He loves them too, and it's maddening.

So he allows this new association, permits these friendships, independent of him and also reliant upon him, and he stands back and watches his children growing up among gods. He will never expel the darkness from his own soul but he does not have to doom them to wither inside there with him.

The midnight will ever be his. For the children he guards and the sake of the child he has never been (_shall always be_) he will allow them daybreak.

* * *

The End

* * *

A/N: I kind of hate this story a lot. But it's done now. Yay. 


End file.
